Conventionally, there has been proposed a vehicle operating system allowing a vehicle to run on a prescribed road based on automatic steering control. In the vehicle operating system, markers (magnetic markers) are installed at a prescribed interval along a vehicle-running path on a road, and a lateral displacement of the vehicle from the vehicle-running path is detected based on a detection signal output every time the vehicle passes each marker. The detection signal is output from a marker sensor mounted in the vehicle and represents a relative positional relationship between the vehicle and the marker. Based on the lateral displacement detected every time the vehicle passes the markers, an automatic steering control is conducted so as not to cause the vehicle to deviate from the vehicle-running path.
Conventionally, in such a vehicle operating system, a technique is proposed in which, to achieve more highly accurate steering control, a target state amount with respect to the lateral displacement is estimated by using a static vehicle model (a model assuming a static state) from vehicle speed and lane curvature, and the automatic steering control is conducted by performing feedback control so that an error between the estimated lateral displacement and actually detected lateral displacement is a target value (see, for example, Patent Document 1).
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Publication No. H11-91609.
Non Patent Document 1: Computational Method of Optimal Control Problem Using Mathematical Programming (2nd report) Introduction of Block Diagonal Hessian Method, Journal of Japan Society for Aeronautical and Space Science Vol. 46, No. 536, pp 497-503, 1998.